The role of transportation infrastructure on the impact of natural hazards on communities

Transportation infrastructure are critical systems supporting community well-being. Its impairment or failure due to hazardous events can lead to societal consequences which are typically challenging to identify, properly model, and quantify. Additionally, these consequences can exacerbate pre-existing distributive inequalities. The Capability Approach has been used to identify and quantify societal consequences in post-disaster scenarios. This paper introduces novel connectivity-based metrics within a Capability Approach framework to quantify well-being and distributive justice in the aftermath of a hazardous event. The paper proposes a methodology to link the ability of individuals to maintain health, be sheltered, be mobile, be educated, or earn income with the loss or reduction of functionality of transportation infrastructure, investigating both the short-term response (immediate impact), and the long-term recovery on the capabilities. As an example, the paper applies the proposed metrics to a real community subject to a seismic hazard. Results show that the different capabilities are impacted both in the response and recovery phases to different degrees.